A few people are probably going to laugh and/or roll their eyes, but the only one of my favorites that no one has mentioned here yet is Jurassic Park. Just the first one, though. They totally botched the second, and there wasn't even a third book.

Jurassic Park III? Saw it in a Philippines movie theater for $1 and still felt ripped off. Please tell me someone had chopped up and randomly rearranged the film (not a problem with other movies I saw there). All the dinosaur effects were apparently either clipped from the first two movies or done with hand puppets.

I vote for Kubrick's 2001 which strictly speaking is not based on a book at all but on a short story. The movie is almost completely unlike the story, but it conveys the central idea extremely well which IMHO is to pose the question "What if we were to find unequivocal evidence of extra terrestrial intelligence?" (Of course it begs the question of what we would do if we ever found evidence for terrestrial intelligence...)

On the ohter hand my greatest dissapointment was the TV mini series adaption of Shogun. It was excellently done right the way through, and I thoroughly enjoyed it, right up until the last few seconds when they changed the whole point of the story around 180 degrees! AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!!

Could you explain that a bit further. I read the book after seeing the series and found the end to be practically taken word by word from the last page. Or are you referring to the last encounter between our hero and Omi? (I don't want to spoil it for those who don't know it yet).

Well, in the mini series at the end Toronaga-san is up on the hill observing the battle and he remains a friend of the Europeans.

In the book he thinks to himself that when he has finally been made Shogun with their aid he will then turn on to the real enemy - the Europeans and throw them out of Japan.

It was the final layer of the onion being peeled away and one of the themes of the book was the many layers to the personality of the Japanese war lords. You could never be sure when you have finally gotten to the real person. I felt that the TV makers had squibed the ending and completely removed the key point of the whole book.

Yeah, its a while since I have seen it also. I just remember the bitter disapointment at how they had changed the ending. Apart from that (IMHO important) point the rest of the adaption was excellent and I thought that they had been very faithful to the book. A rarety as far as I can tell.

definitely Kubrick's 2001.
A Scanner DarklyJane Eyre (Zeffirelli's version, with Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt.)
Strayed (French film, directed by Andre Techine, based on Gilles Perrault's book The Boy With the Grey Eyes

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
--Mark Twain

The Lathe of Heaven by Ursurla K. Le Guin (sp) . The BBC production pretty much covered every word in what i consider a sci-fi masterpiece. Also the BBc/A&E production of Pride of and Predudice(sp) is superb ( I am unashamed to reveal that i loved a "chick flick" being secure with my masculinity).

Swatopluk wrote:I hate it that the BBC dropped their planned DVD edition of the original 1984 TV play (life) with Peter Cushing as Winston Smith (and Donald Pleasance as O'Brian, if I remember correctly).

I saw this a year or so ago (a repeat on BBC3). The sets weren't great (it was more like a stageplay than anything else) but Cushing was perfect as Smith - just as I always imagined the character.

Here's a lowbrow one -- John Carpenter's "The Thing" was teriffic. A great adaptation of Campbell's "Who Goes There?"